"She Was The Kind Of Person Who Read Books At Parties"

"She was the kind of person who read books at parties"

Intaglio print, black ink on white paper.

top was in the final edition, bottom is a proof.

really I should just scan this one, it's small enough to fit an office scanner, but I'm quite enjoying presenting these pieces as objects of ephermera rather than pure images presented without the context of the hands that made them. partly because the aesthetic impulse of printmaking is the idea that the image is more important that the object where the modern conception of high art holds that the object is more important than the image.

why yes, I have been re-watching Ways of Seeing by John Berger.

so should you.

on to process: this was the last intaglio print I made both for school and not. as intaglio, like most printmaking, is a bit of a bitch to set up at home. remember, all of these processes started out and existed in their day as production processes. they are designed to allow a printing company to churn out assembly line reproductions of pictures for sale to a mass market, this was true for Hokusai as Durer, just as much as it is true for me. printmaking is not a good media for a hobbyist to do the whole job of it every once in a while. it demands dedication and equipment.

anyways, when I make an etching, my process is to sketch it out on a piece of paper, sometimes I transfer that with iron oxide,  then I hard ground etch my general lines, then I go in and do one nice deep aquatint. I stopped out the sparks and the stars before I started to give the clean whites. mid-etch I used some alcohol on the smoke to the clouds to see if I could control the effects what had earlier turned out to be a happy accident. and then I etched it to black. after that proofed it, then worked it up and further controlled the smoke effects I had created with the alcohol by burnishing out the highlights I wanted.

mid-way through this process I turned it in for critique. after being blasted pretty hard for having a messy composition and having people completely ignore the parts I wanted them to pay attention to while being unhappy what what they did see; I cut the entire foreground out of the picture with the plate-cutter. I don't have an example of the picture before I did this, it was pretty bad.

this picture is about the beginning of my relationship with Seb. he seemed to like me, but I wasn't sure what to do with him. in terms of deer-girl paranarrative, it's about deer girl before she got mixed up with the wolves, not feeling like she fit in with the people who were supposed to be the right people to fit in with.

I feel like I can't entirely get a handle on how to draw Seb. (he is depicted as a part-animal person in this, but you can't see part-what because I haven't figured that out yet) I wonder if that's because he is not so good at projecting a consistent created persona, or because I'm nearsighted and somewhat face-blind. but, his face looks different to me every day. sometimes I have to close my eyes and hold him so I can smell him to tell that I have the right guy.

the nose knows. the nose always knows.

Chicken of the Woods (with a nuthatch and a chickadee)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus_sulphureus

Morel Mushrooms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morel

Tonight I tried to clean my screen in the bathtub with hot water, baking soda,  and the wrong kind of screen cleaner. the streaky green stuff is diazo photo emulsion still on it from the last time I tried to clean it about two years ago. (fruitless note to past self: do not rely on lab partners to not use all the screen-cleaner, buy your own bottle and hoard it)

mixed results (obviously) but not bad for old fashioned bathroom seriography.

I do not want to buy a whole thing of special screen cleaner. I want to do some reductive work with the blue stuff and the brown stuff.

sometimes my wants are not at issue.

5"by 7" scratchboard.this is just some practice scribbles from copying off wikipedia.

I want to draw a majestic animal, and I end up with Moon Moon. story of my life.

Cascadia flag patches.

done by me in cotton DMC thread on post-consumer polyester felt.

I'm feeling derivative tonight. so sue me.

also, these are Christmas presents, BUT FOR WHOM??